Cueball trained himself to type while asleep, so he could communicate from inside his dreams. He calls this Trans-Consciousness Messaging Protocol, or TCMP.

He succeeds in using this system to send a message from inside his dream, but his friends, Megan and another Cueball-like guy, are disappointed when that first message is a trollish "F1rst p0st!!", instead of something constructive. This cliche comment is typed by people on the internet after they discover a previously not commented post or creation, such as this experience. Most social media sites display comments in chronological order so that the oldest comments are at the top and the newest are at the bottom. Most people only read the topmost posts, thus giving Cueball's post the most views. See also 1019: First Post and 1258: First and regarding trolling 493: Actuarial.

The title text explains how this protocol, if real, would be of great value in dream research since you then would not have to worry about forgetting the dreams after waking up like as in 430: Every Damn Morning. You can relay the dreams as you experience them.

However, in order for this to work the dream has to be lucid, where the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming. This type of dream is very fascinating to Randall as mentioned in the title text of 203: Hallucinations. But thus this could never work for normal dreams. And lucid dreams are probably easier to remember anyway.

Discussion

F1rst p0st!!

...seriously, if I could remember, I would rather start with 'What Hath God Wrought!' That is far more solemn and dedicating... not just to Morse-sensee, either!Greyson (talk) 02:22, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

The second paragraph screams of this comic. I've been a big fan of the Lucidity Institute and their work since about 2010. 108.162.238.117 07:48, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I was gonna say "Didn't LaBerge do something like this irl?" and then I found this little citation: LaBerge, Stephen P., et al. "Lucid dreaming verified by volitional communication during REM sleep." Perceptual and motor skills 52.3 (1981): 727-732. --173.245.48.90 19:53, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

There is a community portal discussion of what to call Cueball and what to do in case with more than one Cueball. I have added this comic to the new Category:Multiple Cueballs. Since there is clearly one Cueball that is the protagonist and do the "talking" he should probably be listed as Cueball. Just made a note that the other guy also looks like Cueball --Kynde (talk) 20:49, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Tools

It seems you are using noscript, which is stopping our project wonderful ads from working. Explain xkcd uses ads to pay for bandwidth, and we manually approve all our advertisers, and our ads are restricted to unobtrusive images and slow animated GIFs. If you found this site helpful, please consider whitelisting us.